Principles: General/Other

(*A Dan Original/Special Principle)

*"The most important issue in chess is SAFETY; second is ACTIVITY; everything else on the board is relatively unimportant." (But thought process, time management, and learning/prioritizing general principles complete the Big 5 and are also important.)

"When you are winning, in general you want to make fair trades of pieces but not necessarily pawns (you want to keep enough pawns on the board to use them to win). When you are losing you want to avoid fair trades of pieces and want to trade pawns, especially if you have a chance to get rid of all your opponent's pawns."

"Don't worry about winning or losing - worry about taking your time to find your best move every move."

"If you are losing and no longer are going to try to make your best move every move, resign and do something better with your time, like going over your game with your opponent or a good player."

"The a-file is always on White's left - the first rank is always in front of White."

"*Time management is an important skill in chess; having 15 minutes left when your opponent has 5 (in a sudden death time control without time delay) is worth about 200 ratings points!"

In slow over-the-board play you should keep score until you have five minutes left with the one exception: If your opponent has much less than five minutes left and you are losing badly.

It is a good idea to write down how much time you (and your opponent) has left after every move.

"If you are watching a game, do a good imitation of a wall. - Don't interfere with a game no matter what (unless you see one of the players cheating away from the board, such as using a computer; that you should report to the tournament director)."

"In the opening a player should play like a book, in the middle like a magician, and in the ending like a machine."

"*In a swiss tournament the most important rounds are the first and the last."

"If you can capture with more than one pawn, usually capture toward the center." This is especially true if the capture was on a knight (b or g) file.

There are only three times you should make a threat:

When your opponent meets the threat (which he almost always will), the result is that your threatening move does more for you than his defending move does for him (i.e., the threat and reply is a net positive, or at least even, result for you. Otherwise you are making a bad gamble your opponent will not make his best move.), or

When the threat cannot be met, or

When you are losing badly; in this case you need to give your opponent opportunities to make key decisions so he might blunder and let you back in the game.

"I don't worry about winning - I worry about finding the best move and let the result take care of itself."

"A knight on the rim? Your future is dim (or grim!)"

"You would not give up the Bishop Pair for nothing any more than you would give up a Queen for nothing."

"Trade off your bad pieces/pawns for your opponent's good pieces/pawns."

"If it wins, do it!" Don't worry about all the other guidelines on this page. You can make a complete mess of your position if you checkmate first or get up enough material.

"Never save time on your clock for playing lost positions!" - Use your time wisely while you still have a chance - don't play too fast.

Donald Byrne rule: "If you see what looks like a mate, but you're not 100% sure and instead can easily win a lot of material, just take the material and mate later."

"Middlegames where each side has an opposite colored Bishop are more likely won; endgames with opposite colored Bishops are difficult to win, even if you are ahead a pawn - or even possibly two."

"The weaker you are, the more learning general principles and general information is helpful. The stronger you are, the more learning specific information, like how to play specific openings, endings, and pawn structures, comes into play."

"Any class player will make great strides if he realizes that the control of individual squares is as important as any other strategy in the game."- IM Jeremy Silman in The Amateur's Mind

"I know how to play when I am losing badly - I just take all my pieces and throw them at my opponent's King. If it doesn't work, I was lost anyway and if it does I can win!" - NM Rich Pariseau

"The best way to play for a draw is to play for a win and if it doesn't work, maybe you can settle for a draw!"

"Loose Pieces Drop Off" (LPDO) = "Nunn's Dictum"

"Three pieces are a mate!" (Meaning if you have three unopposed pieces around the opponent's King that is usually enough to checkmate him).

"A bishop is good behind its own pawns if they are mobile. If those pawns are fixed, then it may be a bad bishop." (but remember Suba's 'Bad Bishops guard good pawns!")

"When (re-)capturing when ahead, if possible, take with a piece which offers further trades."

"The more open the position, the more that time-dependent guidelines are important. For example, 'Knight on the rim' hurts more in open positions since the time it takes for the Knight to re-position itself is more critical than in less open positions.

"Never take the Queen's Knight (b-) pawn with the Queen. But this mostly applies in openings when the Queen can either be trapped or it takes too much time to extricate it.

"At the start of a game a tempo is worth about 1/3-1/2 a pawn. Later it can be worth much more."

*"The more symmetric a position is, the more a material advantage is meaningful." Corollary: The more you are behind, the more asymmetric (both in terms of pawns and type of material imbalance) you want it to be. If you are behind, it is better not to have a subset of your opponent's material, but rather an imbalance (better to be down the exchange than two pawns, etc.). If you are ahead, better to be up a superset of your opponent's material than be ahead on some type of imbalance.

"If you don't know what to do, identify your worst piece and find a way to make it better."

"If you can trap your opponent's King in the middle of the board with Queen's still on the board and a relatively open position, that is worth, on the average, about 2 pawns." (Alburt)

"Just because a cute move is possible doesn't make it good!"

"If you can't find a plan, find your worst piece and make it better." Alternatively, "...find your opponent's worst piece and keep it bad." Often a great plan is just to make your worst piece better.

If you don't know what to do, don't push a pawn! Alternatively, if you think that "doing nothing" is a good plan, it is probably not a good idea to move a pawn (because pawn moves create weaknesses and cannot be taken back).

The lesser the value of a piece, the more likely that it can happily perform 'guard' duties to guard another piece. Valuable pieces should not be used to guard less valuable pieces over many moves - a waste of material.

When you are ahead and you exchange pieces, it is not always the value of the pieces which is important; it is the position left on the board and how easy it is to win. When ahead, you can often give back part - or even all - of the material if what is remaining is an easy (or easier) win.

With ratings under 1900 USCF, the better the analyst, the better the player. Other skills such as opening knowledge or understanding positional nuances are basically not large factors.

If you can play well in critical positions it is not so important how well you play otherwise (until you get really good!)

The duller the position, the more meaning a material advantage is; the more wild the position, the less material is valued.

If you find a move that does at least four good things, do it! (George Kane)

In general, guarding something is not desirable since this ties down pieces (which have better things to do), may require additional guarding later, and may lead to the removal of the guard tactic. However, guarding with pawns is often OK since they often have nothing better to do than to guard something.

Don't beat yourself! Make it so others have to beat you! For example, don't get into unnecessary time trouble or don't give your opponent free pieces.

When you are the higher rated player you can often count on your lower rated opponent for helping you with bad ideas. So sometimes doing "nothing" may spur him on! (But in your analysis don't assume he will make bad moves - that is something completely different).

When there is only one open or semi-open file for your army and it is an open file, then if you have two rooks, almost always double rooks on that file

One important thing that consistently separates good players from lesser players is the ability to not cry over spilt milk. You can't change the past; you can only do the best you can in the present.Whenever possible, capture so that you get more pawns in the center (this is a very underrated and overlooked principle). So you don't just capture toward the center when you have two possible pawn captures, you often capture with a pawn toward the center when you can capture with a piece.

If you only have one bishop left, then: 1) If there opposing bishops of opposite colors and these are the only two pieces (non-pawns) left on the board, then put your pawns on the same color as your bishop. (i.e., this case is bishops of opposite colors, no other non-pawns except kings) 2) In all other cases (more than one piece left on each side; only pieces left are bishops of the same color, etc.), then put your pawns on the opposite color as your bishop.

Whoever uses his rooks best in the opening, wins the opening; Whoever uses his pawns best in the middlegame wins the middlegame; whoever uses his king best in the endgame wins the endgame.

A piece "A" that is guarded by another piece "B" which is attacked is not really guarded by piece B (important removal of the guard idea)

GM McDonald: "One of the rules of dynamic chess is that a loose pawn structure that energizes the pieces is always to be preferred to a neat and lifeless one."

* Strategy and positional ideas are the tiebreak of equally safe moves; similarly style is the tiebreak of equally desirable moves.Good players make their own luck (or "good players are lucky")

Permanent solutions to weaknesses/problems are better than temporary or patchwork solutions

*You should have only two gears: "Try your best" and "Resign". Everything in-between is dangerous and counter-productiveDon't place pieces of greater value on the same line (diagonal, file, rank) as a piece of lesser value, even if that line is temporarily blocked/closed. It leads to pins and discovered attacks.